LIFE & TIMES: Dr. Edward N. Anderson

Born Nov. 13, 1900, in Oskaloosa, Iowa; died April 26, 1974, at age 73 in Clearwater, Fla.

Vital statistics

Born Nov. 13, 1900, in Oskaloosa, Iowa; died April 26, 1974, at age 73 in Clearwater, Fla.

What he did

An All-America football player under the famous coach Knute Rockne at Notre Dame, Dr. Anderson followed in Rockne's footsteps and became one of the most successful and revered grid coaches of the last century, putting Holy Cross College on the national football map.

A two-way end on Rockne's first Notre Dame team in 1918, he was captain and a consensus All-America as a senior. The Irish lost only one game in his final three years — to Iowa, a team he later coached. A teammate of the legendary George Gipp, he set a school record with three TD receptions against Northeastern, the last thrown by the Gipper, later portrayed in a movie by president-to-be Ronald Reagan.

Dr. Anderson won 201 games while coaching 39 seasons, including two tenures (21 years) at Holy Cross, where he compiled a 129-67-9 record. When he retired in 1964, he was the dean of coaches in college football and was later elected to the Holy Cross Hall of Fame and the National Football Foundation Hall of Fame. He coached the College All-Stars in their annual game against the NFL champion in 1940 and 1950 and the East in the 1955 East-West Shrine Game.

The “golden era” of Holy Cross football is generally considered to be Dr. Anderson's first tenure from 1933 to 1938 when the Crusaders went 47-7-5 and had two unbeaten teams. The 1938 team, featuring “Bullet Bill” Osmanski, went 8-1 and is usually regarded as the best in school history.

Returning to his native Iowa as coach of the Hawkeyes in 1939, Dr. Anderson won two Western Conference titles, was named Coach of the Year and coached All-American Nile Kinnick, who was killed in World War II.

Holy Cross football fortunes were at a low ebb when Dr. Anderson returned in 1950 — the Crusaders had gone 1-9 and lost, 76-0, to archrival Boston College the year before under Osmanski. The highlight of his first year back was a season-ending 32-14 victory over BC's Eagles. Dr. Anderson had an 11-10 record in that storied rivalry.

Dr. Anderson's teams went 8-2 in each of the next two seasons, sparked by stars like Charlie Maloy, Mel Massucco, Johnny Turco, Vic Rimkus and Chet Millett. In later years, Holy Cross, more interested in academics than athletics, started to de-emphasize football. But there were only two losing seasons in Dr. Anderson's second, 15-year tenure, a pair of victories over nationally ranked Syracuse and some outstanding players such as Jim Buonopane, Vince Promuto, Pat McCarthy, Tom Hennessey, Dennis Golden and Jon Morris.

“Boy, I wish I had one more shot at those guys,” Dr. Anderson told his son Jim after coaching his final game, a 10-8 loss to Boston College in 1964.

Dual career

While coaching at Holy Cross, Dr. Anderson also practiced medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, Mansfield State Training School and Rutland Veterans Hospital while living in Rutland. “When I got out of medical school, I had to decide whether I'd be a doctor or a coach. I chose both,” he said.

Defining moment

“I'll never forget it,” Dr. Anderson said of his first meeting with Rockne as a 17-year-old freshman in 1918. “Rock looked me up and down and said, ‘How big are you, son?'

“Five-10 and 149 pounds, sir,” he replied.

“ ‘What position do you play?'

“ ‘End, sir.'

“ ‘I've got 16 right ends and 14 left ends,' he growled at me.

“ ‘I guess I'm a left end then,' I told him.

“Rock chuckled and tossed a pair of football pants at me.”

Dr. Anderson said Rockne always wanted to be a doctor himself and when he learned his player was thinking about medical school, kept after him about it. “He made a big impression on me, and I suppose that's one reason why I did go on and become a doctor,” he said.

Event that shaped his life

While attending Rush Medical College at the University of Chicago, Dr. Anderson was also head football and basketball coach at DePaul University and playing captain of the Chicago Cardinals, the 1925 NFL champions. According to biographer Kevin Carroll, Anderson had it written into his Cardinals contract he didn't have to practice: “There were days when he would attend medical school, coach, study, and late at night, take a run for miles along the shores of Lake Michigan, reviewing in his head the details from his Cardinals playbook and medical texts.”

What others said

“He commanded absolute awe. Square-jawed, iron-willed, ramrod-tough, blunt and stern, the Doc had that quality of ‘gravitas' and he used it well,” said former New England sportscaster Clark Booth at a reunion of Anderson's players in 2003. “He was strongly linked with genuine immortals as Rockne's captain, an All-American end, Gipp's pal, coach of Kinnick and Osmanski. A highly improbable character and, in the end, as much myth as man.”

Vince Promuto, HC Hall of Famer and former Washington Redskins All-Pro guard: “Someone or something has to touch an emotion within you — anger, pride, whatever — to make you play beyond your own limits. In my career, only two coaches had the ability to reach that emotion. One was Vince Lombardi; the other was Dr. Anderson.”

“He was a great coach, a great gentleman and a wonderful person,” said longtime Hudson High football coach Vic Rimkus, an All-East guard under Anderson in the early 50s, “but he was a tough man. If he was for you, he was really for you. I modeled my attitudes toward teaching and coaching after his.”

He was human

Despite the hero worship, Anderson was human. Some of his former players still talk of not being able to escape the coach's doghouse. There was also a scandal in 1921 when Anderson and seven Notre Dame teammates were caught playing in a semipro football game, and he was banned from playing basketball and baseball as a senior.

While preparing the College All-Stars for an eventual 17-7 victory over the Philadelphia Eagles in 1950, Coach Anderson judged a slight backfielder as “too slow and not shifty enough to make it in the pros. I told him to go back to Dallas and get a job.” Southern Methodist great Doak Walker went on to make All-NFL five times and led the Detroit Lions to two NFL titles.

Something you may not know

Dr. Anderson's father, Edward M. Anderson, was of Norwegian extraction, like Rockne, and changed the spelling of his name from Andersen. His mother was Nellie Dinon, an Irish American.